Etic and Emic

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Emic and Etic In the study of human behaviour and social science, there are two main approaches that can be taken on – emic or etic. These two terms were first introduced by linguistic anthropologist Kenneth Pike in 1954, who derived the terms from the terms “phonemic” and “phonetic”. Similar to how phonemic and phonetic are two perspectives that can be adopted when studying a language’s sound system, emic and etic are two different perspectives that can be employed when studying human behaviour. In both these cases, one perspective is from the point of view of an ‘insider’ (emic), and the other of an ‘outsider’ (etic). Put simply, an emic perspective is a view from within, and the etic view is from outside. In Pike’s words, while the “etic viewpoint studies (human) behaviour as from outside of a particular system, the emic viewpoint results from studying behaviour as from inside the system.” Marvin Harris however, defined these terms with slightly different connotations. As a cultural anthropologist, Harris associated the emic and etic perspectives closely with the study of human behaviour in different cultures, and over the years this has become one of the main definitions of emic and etic. An emic perspective would be from someone within that culture, or a researcher trying to understand the culture the way the natives do, and would be influenced and expressed in terms of what is regarded meaningful to natives of that culture. An etic approach would be from someone outside of that culture, or a researcher trying to understand the culture in mainly scientific terms. While the emic approach is often more about gaining understanding and insight in one specific culture, the etic approach generally seeks to compare cultures to others, and seek to theoretically explain various relations and connections between different cultures. For example, when explaining how
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